Ana-Mita Betancourt: Navigating Risk for the World’s Underserved

The Passenger car ferry linking Tunisia with Europe was considered key to economic development in North Africa, if somewhat ill-timed politically. Tunisia’s president, whose signature was required to guarantee construction of the $200 million vessel, had just been deposed and the parliament dissolved in the wave of revolutionary fervor that came to be known as the Arab Spring.

Working overtime to keep the complex deal on track was Ana-Mita Betancourt, JD ’81, general counsel of the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA). She and her team of lawyers at the affiliate of the World Bank Group, in consultation with experts in Tunis, found a creative way under the law for the interim government to still provide a binding guarantee. That cleared the way for MIGA to issue indispensable political risk insurance to a group of private banks financing the project. Today, the ferry is fulfilling its promise as a vital transportation hub in the region.

“It’s not as if you can look it up in a book,” Betancourt says, of the sort of novel legal problems that confront lawyers working for international development agencies. “But, intellectually, it’s incredibly challenging and dynamic. You are dealing with a rapidly changing landscape, with a lot of risk and a lot of opportunity, and you have a chance to make a difference.”

During a 35-year career, Betancourt has encountered more than her share of geo-political quandaries, serving in top posts at not only MIGA but organizations such as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). These international finance institutions provide loans and support for infrastructure and other public projects in the developing world, encouraging participation by private lenders that see such ventures as either too risky or unprofitable.

Over the years, she has worked on hundreds of deals—from the world’s largest copper and gold development project in Mongolia, which is creating thousands of jobs, to the modernization of a ceramic toilet manufacturing plant in Nicaragua, which is addressing dire sanitation problems in poor and rural areas. She has helped bring clean water to rural China and aid to small farmers in sub-Saharan Africa.

On her watch as chief legal officer at MIGA, one of the World Bank Group’s four operating units, the volume of political risk insurance and other guarantees issued by the agency more than doubled to $4.3 billion. Notwithstanding the risky environments in which MIGA operates, fewer than one percent of the commitments resulted in claims being made, reflecting in no small part on the accomplishments of the legal department working with member countries and investors when political violence and other troubles hit.

With multiple investors and financiers transcending borders, such deals are complex and politically charged. A single transaction can involve laws and legal traditions of many different countries. And the cultural and environmental stakes are often high. The lawyer ends up wearing many hats—dealmaker, diplomat, and social reformer.

“[Betancourt] had this deep, inner commitment to diversity and inclusion writ large. That kind of generosity of spirit and interest in helping others grow and succeed is rare.”

– KATHERINE MEIGHAN, GC, INTERNATIONAL FUND FOR AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

With a reputation for rigor and compassion, Betancourt filled those roles exceedingly well. At the same time, as an openly gay Hispanic woman, she has tried to create opportunities for others. She hired and mentored lawyers with diverse backgrounds and used her position to give civil society groups and indigenous peoples a greater voice in the development process.

“She had this deep, inner commitment to diversity and inclusion writ large,” says Katherine Meighan, a former World Bank colleague, who is now the general counsel of the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Rome. “That kind of generosity of spirit and interest in helping others grow and succeed is rare.”

“She is an incredibly caring and sensitive person, and she is definitely a no-nonsense person. Those two characteristics do not necessarily go together,” adds Michael Strauss, JD ’01, who is now the U.S. representative to the Asian Development Bank in Manila. Strauss worked with Betancourt at MIGA and was the lead lawyer on the Tunisian ferry financing. “We needed an air-tight legal opinion, and there was enormous pressure,” he recalls. “I remember sitting in Ana-Mita’s office. She looked at me and said, ‘Get me comfortable.’ ”

Ana-Mita Betancourt: Navigating Risk for the World's Underserved 1
Ana-Mita Betancourt, JD ’81, at her home in the D.C. area (photo by Mike Morgan)

Betancourt comes from a family of immigrants. Named for her German and Cuban grandmothers, she was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Education and service to others were core values. Her mother was a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, and her father was a government prosecutor. Betancourt remembers how her parents would hold forth on the front porch of their home in a San Juan suburb and offer advice to students and neighbors.

She started law school at Stanford Law at age 19, the only Puerto Rican in her class. During the first year, she contemplated leaving, feeling culturally isolated and overwhelmed. But Miguel Méndez, the late Stanford Law professor who was the first Latino member of the faculty, and Judge LaDoris Cordell, JD ’74, former dean of minority recruiting, became beacons of support and she thrived. Hard work became a hallmark of Betancourt’s professional style. Years later, one of her greatest thrills would be meeting Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, who was born to Puerto Rican parents.

Eight years after graduation, with experience as a litigator and corporate lawyer at large law firms, she decided to try a different path. An SLS classmate suggested she apply for a government job in international finance. That advice proved life changing: an opportunity to use the expertise she had developed crafting complex transactions, but to serve public rather than private interests. She found the mission, as a kind of international civil servant, thrilling.

“You are there because you want to promote economic and social development. You want to fight poverty,” she says. “In my heart, it was always the same thing: try to make poor peoples’ lives better.”

With 1.3 billion people living in extreme poverty around the world, the task is daunting. International finance agencies have long focused on getting developed-world countries to make loans to developing nations. But there is a growing realization that governments alone cannot do the job. Betancourt’s calling card has been as an advocate of engaging private investors with public incentives.

In the early 1990s, for instance, one of her first projects was in Sierra Leone. It was a classic case crying out for public-private development: The country had rich mineral deposits but no money to develop them.

OPIC, the overseas development arm of the U.S. government, agreed to finance a group of U.S. and Dutch investors looking to mine rutile, a feedstock for the paint and paper industries. It was left to Betancourt to negotiate terms and get teams of lawyers on the ground in three different countries to secure the collateral. She met with government officials in the capital city of Freetown and traveled a hundred miles inland to check out a compound that had been built for the mine workers.

She also became expert in managing risks and salvaging deals when things went south. An OPIC-backed hotel in Turkey, for instance, found itself struggling because of low occupancy and a depreciating Turkish lira. The investors made matters worse by mortgaging the property to a group of lenders that, unlike OPIC, was more interested in getting its money back than generating jobs.

“You had a U.S. government agency, three local banks, Turkish, British, and U.S. shareholders, and 40 local business people suing each other,” Betancourt recalls. At one point, she had to get a court order to stop one lender from seizing all the mattresses. Thirteen trips to Turkey, and some long meetings in smoke-filled rooms, kept the doors open.

In the mid-2000s, as deputy general counsel of the 48-country IDB, the largest source of development financing to Latin America and the Caribbean, Betancourt oversaw the legal aspects as the agency transitioned away from solely sovereign lending. Negotiating with private-sector clients was a big change for an institution that had long dealt exclusively with government entities.

“You bring in a new culture, a new way of doing things, new documentation, new everything,” says Rosemary Jeronimides, who was hired by Betancourt at the IDB and is now general counsel of its private investment arm. “She was critical in strengthening and consolidating a team of lawyers with expertise in cross-border financing in Latin America and the Caribbean to support the institution’s burgeoning private-sector activities.”

Among other projects, Betancourt was the supervising attorney on a natural gas project in Peru, which involved building a 340-mile pipeline from the Amazon rainforest across the Andes to Lima and the Atlantic coast. The massive development has been an engine of economic growth.

She was the point person on replenishing a new multi-lateral investment fund at the IDB, smoothing over differences of opinion among member countries over their financial contributions and vision for the fund and its priorities. The $502 million fund has since invested in hundreds of projects benefiting the poor and vulnerable, piloting climate-saving agriculture and other innovations.

Betancourt was also the architect of a new mechanism at the IDB that ensures that local communities in Latin America concerned about the impact of development projects have a role in the process. To accomplish this, she traveled to more than a dozen countries, seeking input from citizen groups. And then she drafted the rules and framework and sold the idea to the IDB board.

“It shows how the institution has tried to evolve and be accountable to the people it serves in the local community,” she says. The mechanism now handles scores of citizen complaints— covering such issues as the involuntary resettlement of native populations to the effects of pesticides and development on natural habitats and the environment. She continues to serve as a volunteer member of an external consultative group that gives advice on how to strengthen its operations and processes.

Since retiring from MIGA in late 2016, Betancourt has been lecturing on development issues, informally coaching younger professional colleagues, studying Italian, traveling with her spouse, Cathy, and playing competitive table tennis, among other activities. But the island of her birth has often been on her mind. Even before Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico had tremendous economic and social development challenges. And the flight of younger citizens since the disaster has added to the challenges of rebuilding.

In a way, the island is a prime candidate for the sort of public-private development Betancourt has done all of her life, although because of its unique political status, it does not qualify for assistance from her old employers. Working with heads of non-governmental organizations, she is exploring ways to help—but acknowledges that the road ahead is difficult.

“The government has run out of money, and you need private inflows to come in. You need investors from the private sector. The question is one of incentives. How are you going to encourage them? How are you going to mitigate risk?” she says. “These are the kinds of questions I have been working with all my life.”

With friends and loved ones still living on the island, the situation in Puerto Rico has been intensely personal and heartbreaking for her. “The loss of life, the damage to the island’s environment, the public health issues—every tragic aspect has been searing,” says Betancourt, who is nonetheless sanguine about the future. “I feel that for the first time the Puerto Rican diaspora, of which I am a part, is coalescing to leverage its clout on the mainland and partner with those directly affected by the hurricane. Creativity, entrepreneurship, and kindness are flourishing on the island. I have no doubt that Puerto Rico, the Isle of Enchantment, will emerge stronger and even more enchanting.” SL